1. Field of the Invention
In general, the present invention relates to structures that are designed to retain and display folded cards, such as greeting cards, Christmas cards and the like. More particularly, the present invention relates to card retaining devices that are constructed as a folder, portfolio, album or like binding.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The sending of folded greeting cards has become a tradition for many social and religious events, such as Christmas, Mother's day, birthdays and the like. When people receive greeting cards, they often like to display the greeting cards for a short period surrounding the event that generated the sending of the cards. However, many folded greeting cards tend to be large and bulky. As such, it is difficult to display a large number of folded greeting cards in a confined space.
Recognizing the need to minimize the space required to display a large collection of greeting cards, many prior art card holders have been developed. Many of these prior art card holding devices hold a plurality of greeting cards around a central hub, wherein the greeting cards radially extend from the central hub. Such prior art greeting card holders are exemplified by U.S. Pat. No. 3,789,526 to Lavinson, entitled Card Holder; U.S. Pat. No. 3,524,274 to Glassburn, entitled Card Holding And Displaying Device; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,852,280 to Beattie, entitled Greeting Card Holding And Displaying Apparatus.
The fact that folded greeting cards are difficult to display in a confined space also makes it hard for a retailer or a printer to conveniently display greeting cards that are for sale. The display of greeting cards consumes so much space, that department stores often dedicate whole aisles for the display of folded greeting cards. The use of large areas of floor space is an option for retailers with big stores. However, small printing shops and individual salesmen do not have this option. Rather, many smaller printing shops and card salesmen carry bound portfolios that contain samples of the greeting cards that are available for sale. Oftentimes, in order to minimize space, only pictures of the cards are available for viewing in the portfolio. In those cases, a few samples of real greeting cards are provided to help illustrate paper types and printing quality.
Although pictures of greeting cards may be sufficient, many customers prefer to see a real sample of the actual card they are buying or are having printed. It is for this reason that many printing shops and salesmen carry portfolios of actual sample cards. Most portfolios that are designed to hold greeting cards are capable of holding only one or two card samples per page. Examples of such card display portfolios are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,772,349 to Tubergen, entitled Greeting Card Album; U.S. Pat. No. 5,713,684 to Turecamo, entitled Greeting Card Album; and U.S. Pat. No. Des 311,208 to Folson, entitled Greeting Card Album. Since only a few greeting cards can be displayed on each page, the sample portfolio is either very large and heavy or the number of sample cards to choose from is limited.
A need therefore exists for a greeting card portfolio system that is capable of display a large number of actual card samples on each page so that a large selection of greeting cards can be displayed in a relatively thin binding. This need is met by the present invention as it is described and claimed below.